New Jersey

If you read Asphalt & Rubber regularly, you’ve likely realized that New Jersey isn’t exactly our favorite state. Really, it’s any state that’s not California that gets some loving jabs from us, and even then we have our preferences on where is the best locale in The Golden State. It’s all good fun to us, and we thank the citizens in the rest of the US for playing with to our humors. That being said, New Jersey is rapidly improving its standing here at A&R (recent office polls place it higher than Iowa!), signing into law today a bill that will allow dealers in New Jersey to sell motorcycles on Sunday. Amen.

In case you haven’t been to a pump recently, gas prices are getting more and more expensive lately, thanks mostly in part to the civil unrest in the Middle East (Libya in particular). While the current sticker shock on gas prices is due to temporary issues, the United States is still bracing itself for $5.00/gallon gasoline this summer, which our friends abroad would love to see in their home countries as they pay nearly double that price for only a litre of fuel. Curious to see how gas prices breakdown by state and by county? Check out this cool widget that Brammo is hosting on its website.

There aren’t a lot of arguments for keeping New Jersey as a state in our more perfect union, and perhaps the only compelling reason for some citizens is to keep the Garden State around so New Yorkers will have somewhere to dump their trash and third-tier reality shows. However one of the shining beacons of hope if you’ve gotten lost on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (and I mean horribly, horribly, horribly lost) is the New Jersey Motorsports Park (NJMP).

The Millville tracks are relatively new-comers to the area, and have provided entertainment to two & four-wheeled enthusiasts alike since their construction. While NJMP has been “under construction” in some form or another for as long as we can remember, the project has seemingly finally hit the end of its troubled waters, recently filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

I love our neighbors to the north, endless outdoor fun, progressive thinking, and an affinity for things of a more “crunchy” nature. But as a 5th-generation Californian, it is ingrained in my head to fear and mistrust the oppressive dictatorship and hate machine the Oregonians run (the California public school system starts this process in the second grade), as they steal children in the middle of the night and brainwash them into Birkenstock-wearing slave labor and questionable physical hygiene boot camps.

So it comes as some surprise that the Oregon State House of Representatives is introducing a bill to allow motorcycle riders, ages 21 and over, the choice of whether they want to ride with helmets or not (an act that misguided tea party wannabes equate with freedom on the open road).